Guevara, a macabre legend on the verge of extinction

By: Pedro Corzo - 05/10/2026

Guest columnist.
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There are countless current events. The Russian imperialist war against Ukraine, as well as Iran and China, pose serious risks to our way of life—all matters of global importance. However, as a history enthusiast, this week I turn my attention to a figure forgotten even by his own architects, an ordinary, wretched man who was forged into a legend by the international left with the acquiescence and participation of countless useful idiots who echoed a very efficiently cultivated fable.

The Cuban revolution, specifically its central architect, Fidel Castro, was a remarkable mythmaker. First, he invented for himself a nonexistent epic and decorum; then, with his malevolent creativity, he crafted a heroic and benevolent history for two of his key figures, Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Of course, both were already dead; they were no match for the Antillean clock, always ready to devour any henchmen who might pose a threat.

Cienfuegos was always presented as a likeable, good-natured individual, one of those people capable of forgiving everything, although, we must add, he never denounced the crimes he witnessed or those he committed.

However, Guevara was the masterpiece of leftist propaganda, personifying, among other supposed virtues, extreme justice, which led the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his partner Simon de Beauvoir to ask him to witness an execution in 1961, without questioning why the victim would be executed.

Fantasies about Guevara were numerous. Those who manipulated his image were extremely skillful, transforming a guerrilla fighter who had failed in every mission into a hero. They managed to make him adored by his potential victims, despite his homophobia. In short, he became the epitome of revolutionary virtues, the perfect role model for professional haters, the envious and resentful, because ultimately they don't work, they don't create, they only exploit and destroy.

There was no romantic Ernesto “Che” Guevara, but a brutal serial killer, capable of committing murders like that of Captain José de Jesús Castaño Quevedo, head of the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC) in Cuba, whom he murdered with blows from rifle butts; suitable to say at the United Nations in December 1964, “We have executed and will continue to execute” and unsurpassed by his criminal record to write to Fidel Castro in April 1967, “Hatred as a factor in the struggle; intransigent hatred of the enemy, which drives beyond the natural limitations of the human being and turns him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”

The infamous "Che" took pleasure in representing the most painful extremes. On one occasion, he asked the Egyptian dictator Gham Abdel Nasser if the revolution had caused many exiles in his country. Nasser replied in the negative, to which Guevara argued that the depth of a true revolution was measured precisely by the number of individuals who felt compelled to go into exile.

This man was a staunch supporter of armed conflict. He advocated for waging war everywhere and wrote about the necessity of conflagrations like the one in Vietnam, stating on more than one occasion: “The peaceful path is eliminated and violence is inevitable. To achieve socialist regimes, rivers of blood will have to flow, and the path of liberation must continue, even at the cost of millions of atomic victims.”

It's true that he became a global icon of youthful rebellion and social justice, but behind that romantic image lies a vast gulf from his historical actions, documented by several historians and supported by testimonies. The real Guevara, the serial killer, the man who wrote to his first wife, Hilda Gadea, "here in the Sierra Maestra, thirsting for blood," cannot be forgotten, because he is perhaps the only guarantee that such nefarious figures will not come to dominate our times.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a creation of the enemies of freedom and human dignity, a falsehood of Fidel Castro and his allies, which, because it was forged in lies, has faded away, although, paradoxically, they will always be remembered by their enemies.

We have a duty not to forget; only in this way can we prevent new destructive chimeras from arising, like those we are still suffering from.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».